MorPolitics

I was like this before I tried regular Arch. I probably would’ve settled on NixOS if I had tried that first. I feel like Linux Mint could be the end of the line because it just works on a lot of old machines & does so quickly.

I would agree that there is no real difference between state & non-state violence, aside from public perception, the additional liability protections that states grant themselves, & stuff like that. However, I probably have the “wrong” opinion about murder & shooting billionaires on Lemmy. I happen to oppose killing billionaires simply because they are billionaires. I don’t support murder, & I don’t think being a billionaire is a reason for someone to be murdered. Maybe if I were trying to impress a socialist girl, I could pretend to have that opinion. But I’m a terrible actor & an even worse liar, so that’s not really my thing.

P.S. I could also just be wrong, & maybe your opinion (about the murder stuff) is actually the correct one. I don’t know. If that’s the case, then there’s definitely something I’m missing.

What sort of opinions would get someone onto the cool people list?

I tell people to try to take the GED & graduate high school early (since it’s a waste of time & full of propaganda), then save money on their first year of college by taking CLEP exams using vouchers provided through completing Modern States courses.

I shouldn’t have only mentioned unions. A better way to put it is that I take issue with education when it isn’t oriented to serve the consumer (i.e., the parent or student). I would oppose eliminating unions, as I actually like many of them; I just don’t like closed-shop unions. I also like worker cooperatives, but I don’t support mandating them.

The conservative goal would be for schooling to be as affordable as possible, without artificial barriers restricting supply for the benefit of unions rather than students. I can’t really speak for all conservatives because, first, I’m not one, & second, there’s a huge diversity of thought within conservatism. For example, some conservatives support Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, while others oppose them, so there are obvious huge differences of opinion within the tent that is ‘conservatism’.

I would agree with you in opposing the wars & Israel’s actions. I also think that is the main concern. Social democratic policies, especially those backed by the world’s reserve currency (2030s social security is projected to have issues), would likely take a while to cause damage similar to what a war or the risk of nuclear proliferation could. (Social democratic policies mostly cause a removal of future growth, i.e., a higher future poverty rate.) I think Israel’s genocidal actions are horrible, & America’s evident limitations are exposed when it engages in wars with huge geographical disadvantages & not enough technological advantages. If America had to declare war on someone (to prop up its wartime economy), it should be Israel. Fighting giant empires like Iran, China, & Russia is strategically stupid; at the very least, pit them against each other rather than trying to fight them all at once. However, obviously I oppose warmongering, but it’s also frustrating how bad they’re at warmongering too.

I don’t really care about those statistics. I was just mentioning a notable mislabeling case. I don’t like racism, & I think we should move beyond the tribal battle stuff. If you want to call me racist, you can call me racist for supporting “freedom of association,” which would allow people to discriminate for arbitrary & goofy reasons. I support the coffee shop that didn’t want to serve the Israeli guy & the Christian baker who didn’t want to make a gay wedding cake.

While it is true that certain races currently commit more crimes per capita, these are trends subject to change; I doubt they are inherent to ethnicity. This is likely caused by cultural factors, learned helplessness, Marxism (which teaches an ‘us versus them’ mentality), ingrained persecution complexes, & other whatnot.

I also disagree with those who believe women shouldn’t vote simply because they currently lean toward social democrats. While I agree that social democracy leads to poverty and stagnation, I don’t think it’s inevitable that women will always vote for social democratic candidates.

We both (probably) view ourselves as good people (or at least as people who strive for that). However, I believe your policies cause people to suffer from a lack of food, shelter, & healthcare (e.g., whether you are a Republican, Democratic Socialist, MAGA, Democrat, etc.). Your politics drive up the cost of supplying these necessities by creating barriers to entry for those who provide them, dictating how and to what extent they can operate. While I think many of the founders were excellent architects of a governance system, I do not view them as saints or possess any sort of hagiomania toward them.

The main point is that flawed data collection is skewing the results. I don’t remember where to find the one with the mugshots to be honest.

“In response to a directive by the U.S. Government’s Office of Management and Budget, the national UCR Program has expanded its data collection categories for race from four (White, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian or Other Pacific Islander) to five (White, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander). Also, the ethnicity categories have changed from “Hispanic” to “Hispanic or Latino Origin” and from “Non-Hispanic” to “Not of Hispanic or Latino Origin.” These changes will be reflected in data presented for 2013.”

https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/resources/about-the-uniform-crime-reporting-ucr-program

#Inflation

Hierarchy is simply a reality. Believing in hierarchy is like believing in reality itself (i.e. someone is going to be better than me at weaving baskets voilà you have a hierarchy: simple as). But “conservative” is too broad a label, because neoconservatives & paleoconservatives disagree dramatically. More right-liberal or libertarian-leaning conservatives generally do not oppose voluntary associations. That is their thing. They love open-source, volunteering, agorism, & so on. I do not know enough about neoconservatives to comment extensively, but they seem probably so obsessively pro-Israel & would likely change their views to anything if it helped Israel.

There is no obvious limit to what can be considered “charity.” So, if the government takes responsibility for providing charity instead of leaving it to individuals and communities, it can use that as a reason to keep expanding its power and responsibilities.

Thomas Jefferson in 1817. He penned, “Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.

In 1794, James Madison stood on the House floor and objected, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

Why Private funding?

I do believe that if there aren’t artificial barriers to production or the supply of goods, humans will end up producing more. As more goods are produced and compete in the marketplace, prices will fall. Democratic socialists, however, tend to micromanage or take over production, which will slow the creation of goods and cause prices to rise.

An interesting digression/aside would be the Jevons paradox: when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource’s use, this can lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource. This is often used as a critique of capitalism by environmentalists.

P.S. I don’t think I’ve talked to a single right-winger on this website yet. Maybe right-wingers are a dying breed, at least in the Fediverse. I don’t know. I’m so alone.

Jevons paradox

I don’t understand. The idea that inadequate border control policies & immigration policies can lead to mass migration into a country seems quite objective to me. I’d say I’d be making an empirical claim thingo there, no? Did I mess up some phrasing or something earlier?

I think your boogeyman, “the owning class,” is very similar to my boogeyman, “the borrower class.” Both are critiques of groups that benefit from particular economic structures. Although we think about economics in totally different ways, there is an interesting parallel between the two ideas.

I’m probably a handmaiden to the fascist class in your eyes, while I think you’re economically illiterate.

My borrower class - Refers to those who gain privileged access to newly created credit or monetary expansion.

Your owning class - Usually refers to capital owners (bourgeoisie) who own productive assets & employ labor.

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Politicians can’t just pass laws to give us shorter workweeks. We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency, making goods and services cheaper to produce & allowing prices to drop.

However, big government programs drain the resources needed to develop an economy. When the government pays for massive spending by printing money & running up debt, it shrinks the value of your dollars and distorts the economy. Add in high taxes, government promises it can’t afford (like public pensions with runaway obligations), & red tape that makes it hard to produce goods, and society ends up poorer.

Instead of making life more affordable, printing money & discouraging investment force you to work longer and harder just to stay where you are.

I guess, literally, he probably means that if Democrats do not allow ICE to deport criminals, potential murderers, & rapists, then there would be bloodshed by those criminals who could have been deported if ICE had not been thwarted. In other words, the people who might harm others & could have been removed from the country would still remain here committing crimes.

However, in light of recent events involving ICE shooting at what appears to me to have been an anxious, bad female driver, the statement sounds much worse/more-ominous/baleful.

P.S. I do not like masked government officials, even if there are people associated with groups like ANTIFA who are willing to murder over this issue. However, I would rather be able to hold government officials accountable. If an ANTIFA member murders someone, they should go to jail, just like an ICE agent should go to jail if they murder someone.

Honestly, this comment of yours is probably more a reflection of your own values than of reality.

It is possible that right-wing sources, or particular types of right-wing sources, have a greater tendency to create disinformation or fabricate facts than left-wing sources. However, the opposite could also be true in some cases; left-wing sources may sometimes be more likely to label their opposition’s claims as misinformation rather than recognizing them as competing interpretations or arguments.

For example, some sources labeled certain claims about natural immunity after exposure to the virus, including claims that it could provide stronger protection than boosters in some circumstances, as misinformation. However, certainty in any broad generalization, such as the idea that natural immunity is always better, hybrid immunity is always better, or mRNA vaccines are always better, would be inaccurate. The reality is that the effectiveness of different forms of immunity depends on many factors, & people continue to study how these factors interact. Outcomes can vary depending on individual circumstances, such as age, comorbidities, immune status, prior exposure, and other whatnot.

It’s one of those terms that means different things to different people, which can cause problems when discussing policy, similar to how people use the term “democratic socialism.” The literal definition of “open borders” would be an anarchic policy. The context in which I used the term, which you probably didn’t understand, perhaps due to a poor explanation on my part, was referring to open borders as a lack of adequate enforcement or supervision of the border (which, in effect, is an open border), with enough immigration to shift electoral outcomes or to supplant a native population’s norms, culture, etc.